What does a group mean?

What other says?

A GROUP is two or more individuals in face-to-face interaction, each aware of his or her membership in  the group, each aware of the others who belong to the group, and each aware of their positive interdependence as they strive to achieve mutual goals. (Johnson & Johnson 1975)         

What I say? 

A group is ideally has goals or purposes or tasks that should be achieved and accomplished. Everybody who decides to be a member of a group is commonly having personal purposes or goals that they want to achieve through her/his involvement in that group. Somehow, I believe a person will not join into a group if he/she does not have the same goals or purpose with the group joined or at least that person think that by involving the group he/she will be able to accomplish some his/her personal purposes. Hence, I think the first step that is important when starting the group work is to ensure that all member of the group have known the goals of the group, so that they truly know what they are doing for.

The next step is defining each role of the member, what they should do, what they could contribute for the group successfulness. In other words, they know well how they are interdependent and how they should interact with each other. Besides, by knowing what are the task and the authority of each member, they are supposed to be aware of his/her membership in the group because what they do for the group has the influence to the achievement of the group. Moreover, another thing that could create an effective group is each individual in the group should have a sense of belonging. Then I think people actually will tend to feel that they belong to a certain group because they feel that they exist in that group, they are part of the group. Hence, acknowledging the existence of each member is a must.

However, I think to define what we should do for creating the effective group is easier than implementing them to be the real one. But, I believe there is nothing impossible in this world as long as we have strong intention to do that and persistent to strive to reach the goals and also to struggle with the challenges.